Meditation / Neurology

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

One of the last interviews we did in India for The TEXT Program was with Geshe Dorji Damdul, the Director of Tibet House in New Delhi. He is a deeply intelligent man, with sharp and considered opinions, and well practiced at handling the questions of Westerners. This year, we ended every interview with a simple question: "What are your hopes for the future of Tibet?" Though simple, and even obvious, the question was warmly received and enthusiastically answered by all of the Tibetans we spoke with, but Geshe Damdul's answer was surprising, and delivered with his characteristic wit and panache. We are currently assembling a montage of all the answers we received to our closing question, but I wanted to circulate Geshe la's answer now, before we release the full film.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

If you missed Piers Morgan's interview on April 24th with the Dalai Lama, you can watch it now. It's a wonderful session, given the format, with Morgan asking His Holiness several questions that you always wondered about.

Friday, July 06, 2012

This sentence, which begins His Holiness's autobiography, Freedom in Exile (1990), is the most important sentence the man has written to date. Or at least that's my opinion, and the case I will try to make as a kind of homage to this long and significant life on the occasion of the Dalai Lama's birthday.

First, the sentence itself: It's simple, clear, forthright, and factual, which is how much of the world views the man today, two decades after he wrote the sentence, and over five decades since he left Tibet. Or, as he said, more accurately, of course, "fled tibet."

Because the Chinese were after him, that's clear, and Lhasa was in revolt, and had he not fled, disguised as a soldier, no less—the ultimate and post-modern nod to nonviolence—we wouldn't be reading this sentence now, and we wouldn't be wishing this man a happy birthday and giving him long-life blessings as he turns seventy-seven.

Many more, Your Holiness, many more. We need you.

If you start looking into Buddhism's arrival in the West, though, you'll eventually run up on this sentence (as long as we're talking about sentences): “The coming of Buddhism to the West may well prove to be the most important event of the twentieth century.” Arnold Toynbee, the imminent British historian of the last century, is purported to have said this, and the statement pops up all over the internet, as does the question, "Did Toynbee really say this?" No one knows; not even Google. But it points us to a sentiment that His Holiness elicits from many of us in the West: the Dalai Lama has carried on his back, over the last half-century, to all corners of the earth, his message of nonviolence, peace, compassion, kindness, love and human rights, which also, by the way, is identical to the version of Tibetan Buddhism that he offers up for public consumption everywhere he goes. No religious tradition that I am aware of—assuming you consider Buddhism a religion, which the Buddha didn't, and which many others, myself included, don't—no other religion, however you define it, has had such an influential spokesperson. His Holiness is simply the hardest working man in the spirit business. That our lives have been enormously enriched by His Holiness is an understatement. So he fled Tibet, and many of us in the West have benefited.

But let's look at the other side of this issue. Suppose His Holiness had never needed to write that autobiography? Or at least if he did write one, it began with another sentence altogether. Suppose his autobiography had begun with the sentence, "I have lived in Tibet, in relative peace, for seventy-seven years." Suppose there had been no Chinese invasion, no forced exile, no cultural genocide, no torture, no slaughter, no deforestation, no shrinking of the Third Pole, and no arrival of Tibetan Buddhism in the West at the hands of the ablest religious diplomat the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have seen? What then?

Many of us in the West can't imagine our lives without His Holiness's teachings, without his example. And he doesn't work alone. Other great Tibetan teachers have arrived in his wake, and some came before he arrived in 1979, and many of these have been equally capable and adept at explaining to us the nature of reality in a way that connects immediately with our day-to-day lives—a kind of Spiritual Physics for the Masses. Maybe Toynbee was right.

As Westerners, though, we must remember that Tibetans rightfully tire of hearing us declaim ad nauseam about the somehow inevitable—maybe even ordained—spread of Tibetan Buddhism beyond its indigenous and original borders. So we have to ask ourselves: what is the cost of our happy discovery of a spirituality we had known relatively nothing about before the 1960's and one that has helped us handle the rampant materialism that is popping up everywhere from the reality TV shows that feature the howling housewives to the pyramid schemes that leave thousands defrauded of their retirement funds? The answer to that question? Here's a start at figuring the cost: the lives of 1.2 million Tibetans; 6000 Buddhist temples; countless sacred manuscripts and works of sacred art; the severing apart of families; the continuing torture of thousands upon thousands of Tibetans; the enclosure of the Tibetan nomads; the attempted eradication of the Tibetan language; the re-education of the Tibetan people according to the propaganda spewed forth by the People's Republic of China.

That is the price that was paid, and is being paid, by the Tibetan people for our own spiritual prosperity.

Let's make sure and keep this in mind as well, as we wish His Holiness a happy birthday.

The Fourteenth Dalai Lama is indeed a gift to the civilized world, or what's left of it, outside of Tibet, and most of all to the Tibetan people, who are struggling mightily inside of Tibet now, where His Holiness and all Tibetans belong, should they ever be allowed to return there, or should they decide to do so, and should their choice ever be honored by the Chinese government.

Thursday, July 05, 2012

The TEXT Program (Tibetans in Exile Today) is an oral-history project directed by Professor Sidney Burris and Geshe Dorjee at the University of Arkansas. The TEXT Program has three purposes:

To preserve the memories and stories of Tibet before the Chinese arrived by interviewing the elderly Tibetans who lived in Tibet before the Chinese invasion began in 1949 and continues today to destroy systematically the Tibetan people, their culture, and their environment.

To allow the Tibetan people to tell their stories, in their own words, in their own way, without intervention or influence from others.

To place Arkansas students on the front-lines of this oral history project, providing them an immediate and first-hand introduction to the issues that will define their own careers in the global village: refugee life & immigration; human rights violations; national autonomy and independence; climatic change; and nonviolence. We believe, and it has been our experience, that working with the Tibetans in this capacity indelibly shapes our students and renders them better able to make informed decisions regarding their own lives and the contributions they will make to the problems that confront them and their generation.

After a very steep learning curve and with the generosity of the University of Arkansas, The TEXT Program now has a YouTube channel affiliated with Arkansas's channel. We will store our interviews there, and they will be available to the general public.

So—the central purpose of The TEXT Program at the University of Arkansas, and of our YouTube channel, is to spread awareness of the powerful and diverse array of voices that are currenlty rising from the Tibetan community in exile.

Accordingly, the more our channel appears in Google searches, and the more its information is shared, the more visible are the problems faced by the Tibetan people.

How can you help? It's very simple.

You can increase our visibility by visiting our YouTube channel, and in the upper right-hand corner, click on the "Subscribe" tab. When we post a new video, you will be contacted through the email account that you provide. And that is all. A kind of clicktavism, if you will, that requires little effort, but will have, we hope, a real impact.

Thanks for your help in this matter. And if you feel so inclined, we'd be delighted if you encouraged a friend to subscribe as well.

Tuesday, May 01, 2012

I learned yesterday in the Times of India that Tenzin Tsundue's book, Kora, a series of poems and stories, will be transformed into a play by Quasar Thakore Padamsee. The play will be done in English, which will secure a larger audience for the questions that Tsundue and Padamsee will address. Central among these questions, according to Padamsee, is a very simple one: "What happens when words aren't enough?"

It's a natural question for the Tibetans.

For Westerners, it is often difficult to know precisely how the Tibetan struggle is faring. Our news agencies are largely oblivious to it because China has become the world's factory in many ways, and we are their customers, whose silence is purchased with Chinese-made goods. And unless we happen to be in regular contact with Tibetans who will talk about these issues with us, we are left to put together our impressions from the scattered reports we gather from the various media sources that we do trust.

That Tsundue and Padamsee are working together on this project should bring another and necessary perspective to the complex issues that Tibetans face every day, both in exile and in Tibet. Art opens avenues of conversation that politics must, by definition, avoid. My only fear is that I won't get to see it.

Let us hope that it will be taped and made available to the larger English-speaking audience. And thanks to Tsundue and Padamsee, for their continual efforts and good work.

Thursday, April 05, 2012

For those of you who have been following TIBETSPACE, you'll know that one of my obsessions has concerned what Westerners can and can't do to help the Tibetan cause. I've been concerned about this because I believe the danger involved with misperceiving our role in the unfolding Tibetan situation is very real. And I further believe that our errors of misperception, once we uncover them, can lead us to surprising insights about ourselves as Americans who have a characteristic perspective on world affairs—a volatile combination of self-confidence and ignorance.

At any rate, Tenzin Tsundue, one of the Tibetan community's most well-known and articulate activists, spoke in Berkeley in March, and what he had to say is something that all Westerners need to hear.

Thursday, March 29, 2012

The letter that Jampel Yeshi wrote before he self-immolated has been translated and is now available at Burning Tibet. Read it as a Tibetan Declaration of Independence; read it as a Tibetan Human Rights document; read it as the last will and testament of a Tibetan patriot; read it as a blueprint of the Tibetan soul.

But read it and remember these words, "Freedom is the basis of happiness for all living beings."

I believe this statement to be universally true, and I believe that the denial of this freedom amounts to nothing more than systemic violence. And I believe, with Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., that systemic violence can only be dismantled through nonviolent direct action.

In June, 2011, my students and I spent time in Majnu Katilla (and in 2008 and 2009 as well), interviewing Tibetans for The TEXT Program, talking to anyone who would talk with us, and absorbing as much information as we could about the current plight of the Tibetans who are living in exile and about those 6 million Tibetans who are living heroically in Tibet. Perhaps we passed Jampel Yeshi in the alleyways. Certainly, Majnu Katilla will never be the same. And our students left utterly changed.

Tibetans from Majnu Katilla and other areas in Delhi have now been rounded up and placed in jail in anticipation of President Hu's arrival, and they are thankful for what King called "the sacrament of incarceration." Majnu KaTilla's narrow walkways are patrolled now by Indian police. (Read a wonderful NYT report here.)

Tenzin Tsundue, who was also arrested on Wednesday, refers to India as his "guru."

"My enemy, my teacher," His Holiness is fond of saying.

Long life to you Tsundue la.

And to Jampel Yeshi, who has now transformed Majnu Katilla into a place of pilgrimage, I have little to say. I can only acknowledge the vast distance that lies between my attempt at homage and your own perfectly realized words.

Senator Diane Feinstein and other senators have introduced Senate Resolution 356 which urges China to cease and desist from its persecution of the Tibetan people and reaffirms the "friendship" between American and the Tibetan people. I would urge you to write your Senators and ask them to support this resolution.

In a letter that Jamphel Yeshi wrote before he self-immolated recently in New Delhi, he asked that if "you have any empathy, stand up for Tibet."

Here is one way of standing up. On the right navigation bar of this page, under "Action Corner," you can easily locate your Senators and send them an email. You may, of course write whatever you wish, but in the interest of time, you may also want to cut and past the following message:

Dear Senator . . .

I am writing to ask that you lend your support to Senate Resolution 356 which requests, among other things, that the Chinese government suspend its brutal oppression of the fundamental religious and civic liberties in Tibet. It also asserts that America is a friend to the Tibetan people and does not condone the abuse of human rights that China has visited upon these people.

The Tibetan people are making the supreme sacrifice for the restoration of their liberties, and I feel that is only right that we offer our support in their heroic struggle.

Sincerely,

Thanks for your help in this important matter. Feel free to re-blog this or forward the information.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

With the recent self-immolation and death in Delhi of Jamphel Yeshi, and with the incarceration of Tenzin Tsundue yesterday, and with the arrival of Chinese President Hu in Delhi, Tibetan affairs have become tense. And that's an understatement. Human rights, independence, autonomy, Obama, China, Tibet . . . all of these issues are cresting at high tide just now. Those of us who support the Tibetans have had varying reactions to these events, and I thought I'd offer three observations, three notes-to-self that I recall on a daily basis.

Be quiet. Listen. Watch. I don't think I have any business debating the effectiveness, purpose, or intentions of the self-immolations. It's a difficult business, setting yourself on fire, and to install myself as judge of that difficult business lacks humility, at least. The Tibetans are struggling mightily to determine their own futures, and they are talking to each other, a task that is made more difficult by the fact that most of them live in occupied Tibet, while those who are directing the international public relations campaign live in India and elsewhere. And as they are talking to each other, they are conceptualizing that future. They are perfectly capable of setting their own goals, and pursuing them however they wish.

Stop intellectualizing. I am not going to spend another second wondering whether self-immolation is something a Buddhist ought to do. (I never have, in fact, approached the problem from that perspective.) China has brutalized the Tibetan people for sixty years; they show no signs of negotiating with them, and have recently, in fact, compared the Dalai Lama's policies to Nazi policies. And the Tibetans have largely responded to this brutalization with nonviolence. Hand-wringing about whether there is Buddhist precedent for these actions is academic, beside-the-point, sheltered, and only meaningful to people like me who live in a neurotically developed country with time to wring their hands and fret about religious consistency. Tibetans are lighting themselves on fire, and their reason and their logic and their love of their country have led them to do it. That's all I need to know.

Generate love wherever you are. As I have watched the news roll in from Tibet and India over the past several months, and seen the bodies staggering in flames, I have tried to recycle the powerful energy rising within me. Anger, hatred, frustration, helplessness—all of these I have felt, and all of these I have tried to understand as manifestations of ignorance. Such understanding, if it comes at all, however, lasts briefly. And then it's gone. But kindness toward those I work with every day and patience with my two-year-old daughter who is valiantly trying to understand the difficulties of the potty, well, these are two actions that seem to help. Perhaps they involve me in a campaign whose central energies are aligned against those energies that fuel human cruelty wherever human cruelty exists. And perhaps the inter-connections among us are indeed that subtle. Still, I don't know why this works, and what is more, I don't care why this works (see point 2: stop intellectualizing). I only know that it does work.

I'm not really sure how these three points will show up in your own lives, if in fact they do at all, but it's the best I've got now in the wake of today's news, and I thought I'd share it with you.